An
Associated Press dispatch from a Thai fishing village summed up the
media spin a few days ago: “Former President Bill Clinton’s voice trembled
with emotion as he and George H.W. Bush put aside their once-bitter
political rivalry...”

Ever since his initial
checked-out responses to the catastrophic tsunami two months ago drew
worldwide derision, the current president has largely relied on two
predecessors to do the image-repair chores. In effect, an ad hoc PR outfit
-- Bush, Bush & Clinton -- has the three partners laboring to make
themselves look good as compassionate great nephews of Uncle Sam. But there
are deeper messages and functions here than mere image-polishing.

When an American
president wants to make war, he doesn’t rely on private contributions. The
U.S. warfare in Iraq has already cost taxpayers more than $150 billion, not
counting the regular Pentagon budget that is now well over a billion dollars
per day.

The global-scale PR
work of Bush, Bush & Clinton underscores the idea that the era of big
government is over -- for humanitarian efforts, anyway. From tuberculosis to
AIDS to tsunamis, while global disasters ravage the public, the responses
are increasingly private. Thanks to President Bush, the U.S. government
dropped out of the tsunami-relief bidding war at $350 million, after the
White House’s earlier offer of one-tenth that amount sparked caustic
criticism.

Instead of boosting
the U.S. Treasury’s commitment -- or, heaven forbid, devoting a major
portion of the Pentagon’s aircraft and vessels to swift delivery of aid to
remote stricken areas -- Bush dispatched two ex-presidents to the PR rescue.
The pair appeared on major TV shows and taped a television commercial before
heading off on a four-day whirlwind photo-op trip to Asia.

At a news conference
in Thailand the other day, Clinton said that worldwide commitments for
tsunami relief have reached a total of $7 billion from government and
private sources combined. Meanwhile, U.S. media air continues to be filled
with testimonials to the warm-hearted generosity of American society.

The president emeritus
of an elite national-security club, the Council on Foreign Relations, has
praised the PR game while urging that it be played more deftly. “People do
watch and see what we do,” said Leslie Gelb. “Here’s an opportunity to
remind people of the good we do, and he [President Bush] can do it without
changing his policy on Iraq or terrorism.” In other words, good deeds worn
on Uncle Sam’s sleeve can help to distract attention from the copious blood
on his hands.

After a career that has spun through revolving
doors of media and government, Gelb knows a lot about propaganda. At various
times, he has worked as a press officer for the Defense Department, a
“national security” reporter for the New York Times, the director of
the U.S. government’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs and the editor of
the Times op-ed page. Back in 1978, while at the State Department, he helped
set up a covert CIA program to get the European press to write favorable
articles about the neutron bomb, a weapon designed to kill people while
leaving property intact.

On the surface, the
humanitarian zeal of Bush, Bush & Clinton transcends ideology. “When it
comes to helping people, politics is aside,” the elder Bush proclaimed,
while his companion Clinton said: “On issues about which there can be no
debate, there should be no problems.” But the roles of the ex-presidential
poster-men in tsunami relief are profoundly ideological, amounting to more
bricks in the propaganda wall that girds against collective solutions and
reinforces privatization of social action. About such agendas there can --
and must -- be debate.

Pieties from
ex-presidents do not change the kind of realities that Mark Engler, an
analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, has described in the wake of the
tsunami: “Those of us in wealthy nations believe that our governments donate
generously to help these people. Yet many poor countries pay out more in
debt service than they receive in aid -- the Jubilee Debt Campaign reports
that India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Maldives, and Indonesia together make
over $23 billion in debt payments each year to multilateral banks and
wealthy governments.”

Methodically stealing from destitute people is not exactly a sign of
generosity. Washington prefers to dress up Uncle Sam as some kind of
star-spangled Santa Claus, but in the real world the resemblance is much
closer to the Grim Reaper. No amount of media spin can bring victims back to
life when a superpower opts for militarism and greed.